14.3: Another Suffix -al

Another Suffix -al

1. You have seen that one suffix -al can be used to make adjectives out of nouns: instruction, a noun, becomes instructional, an adjective. There is another suffix -al that can be used to make nouns out of verbs. A verb is a word that shows action or state of being and that will make sense in a blank like this one:

They will___________them.

For example, renew is a verb: They will renew them.

A verb is also a word that changes its form to show changes in time: Tomorrow they will renew them. vs. Yesterday they renewed them.

A noun is a name of a person, place, or thing and will make sense in a blank like this one:

The___________seemed okay.

If we add -al to the verb renew, we make renewal, a noun: The renewal seemed okay.

2. Combine the verbs and suffixes below to make new nouns:

Verb

Suffix

Noun

commit

al

committal

approve

al

approval

arrive

al

arrival

dismiss

al

dismissal

remove

al

removal

refer

al

referral

dispose

al

disposal

bury

al

burial

propose

al

proposal

try

al

trial

refuse

al

refusal

sign

al

signal

3. Which two nouns did you make that had twinning in them?

committalreferral

4. In which two nouns did you have to change a <y> to <i> when you added the suffix?

burialtrial

5. In which six nouns did you have to delete a final <e> when you added the suffix?

approvalarrivalremovaldisposalproposalrefusal

5. Proofreading Quiz. There are six misspelled words in the following paragraph. Each misspelling involves a double consonant that is there but shouldn't be, or should be there but isn't. Find the six misspelled words, cross them out, and spell each one correctly above its misspelling:

Our word school comes from an old Greek word that meant “leisure”! That might seem to be a rather odd beginingbeinning for a word that referrsrefers to the place where so many people put in so many hours of work. But the clasicalclassical philosophers preferedpreferred to think of leisure as a time for study and learning. So these words all stemedstemmed from a Greek word that meant “a holding back, a rest, leisure”: school, schooling, schoolhouse; scholar, scholarly, scholarship, scholastic, scholastically. In all of these words that <ch> speling of [k] comes from the Greek letter chi, which is writenwritten written in our alphabet as <ch> pronounced [k].